An attempt is made to share the truth regarding issues concerning Israel and her right to exist as a Jewish nation. This blog has expanded to present information about radical Islam and its potential impact upon Israel and the West. Yes, I do mix in a bit of opinion from time to time.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

How today's anti-Zonism continues the old antisemitism

This article was originally published in Midstream magazine [New York] in the Spring 2012 issue

Today’s
anti-Zionists like to claim that their stance is something new,
something unrelated to the old antisemitism which they typically pretend
to reject. They usually claim that they oppose Israel because of its
supposed cruel treatment of those Arabs now fashionably called
“Palestinians” or of its colonizing Arab land (or “Palestinian land”)
or, even deeper into fantasy, of being an “apartheid” state. In other
words, it is Israel’s conduct that makes them anti-Zionist.

One
problem with these claims is that there never was a “Palestinian
people” in all history, although there always was a population of some
size or other, however small it may have been, in the land that Arabs
and their partisans now typically call “Palestine.” Indeed, the notion
of a “Palestinian people” is a new one and only came into widespread use
in the 1960s, especially after the Six Day War.

Leaving
aside the historicity of a “Palestinian people,” there are at least
three major ways in which anti-Zionism today –as a set of notions or
themes-- continues the legacy of the old antisemitism:

1. The Myth of Jewish evil, Jewish original sin, and Zionism or Israel’s original sin.

2. The Alien nature of the Jews, alien wherever they are.

3. Jewish domination whether of society in one country or of the world.

A. The Belief in Inherent, Irremediable Jewish Evil and Original Sin & Israel’s Original Sin

If
we focus on European, Western that is, Christian antisemitism, setting
aside Arab and Muslim Judeophobia, we see that the Jews’ original sin is
their alleged causing of the crucifixion of Jesus, who is typically
depicted as ever innocent and innocuous, harmless, meaning to bring only
good to the world. The Four Gospels, on the whole and as a whole,
despite various contradictions and discrepancies, show that ancient Jews
brought about the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet Joel Carmichael
(former editor of Midstream) pointed out that many fragments of
a different narrative, a different characterization of Jesus, are still
scattered throughout the Four Gospels.[i]
Jesus in one place is quoted saying: “Do not resist an evil person. If
someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”
(Matt. 5:39 NIV). However, in another place he tells his audience: “I
did not come to bring peace but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). Moreover, one of
his followers is described as a Zealot (Matt. 10:4), another is called
Rock (Simon called Peter = Rock; Matt. 4:18,10:2), two others are the
Boanerges brothers, described as “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17; perhaps
from the Hebrew Bney Ra`ash). Further, we read that he
overturned moneychangers’ tables. So much for the pacifistic Jesus.
Nevertheless, Christian tradition stresses the pacifistic, innocent and
innocuous Jesus. That characterization of Jesus was hegemonic over the
centuries. And it is the view of Jesus as a mild innocent that magnifies
the horror of the Jews’ allegedly urging the Romans to crucify him.

Jewish
“original sin” naturally gives rise to a belief in inherent Jewish
evil. Hyam Maccoby and Joshua Trachtenberg both analyzed “the myth of
Jewish evil.” The first considered this myth in early Christianity in a
number of books and articles; the second took up the medieval
stereotypes still prevalent in the 20th century, in his The Devil and the Jews (1943).

It
may not be necessary to point out, but hatred of Jews based on the
crucifixion theme has lasted well into modern times. Consider some of
the resistance to Pope John XXIII’s proposed changes to Catholic dogma
on the Jews at the Vatican II Conference, 1962-1965. Here is an earlier
expression of this mood from the French Catholic La Croix, specifically directed against emancipating the Jews:
To
admit the Jews into Christian society is like declaring that the
deicide, for which they bear a perpetual curse, no longer has to do with
our generation. But if we are Christians, they remain cursed.” (La Croix, 6 XI 1894)[ii]

Georges Montaron, editor of the French “left Catholic” weekly, TémoignageChrétien, updated the tableau of crucifixion by the Jews to the Six Day War. He wrote not long after the war in the summer of 1967:

Should Tel Aviv [that is, Israel] need money, the billionaires come together at the foot of Golgotha.[iii]

Golgotha,
skull in Aramaic, is the name of the hill where Jesus was crucified,
according to the New Testament. The super rich, the billionaires (and we
know that the Jews have all the money), support Israel’s acts of
crucifixion, chief among them the Six Day War. Montaron had the virtue
of writing explicitly what others were insinuating, perhaps in a secular
mode and unconsciously. In other words, avowedly “secular” or “leftist”
writers may have shared the crucifixion paradigm in Montaron’s mind.

The
notion of a “Palestinian people” emerged in the early 1960s but the
label did not become dominant in the media until after the Six Day War.
The notion conceptually transformed Palestinian Arabs into a separate
people. Thus this section of Arabs could be viewed as “underdogs” in the
Arab struggle with Israel. The notion left the Arab states off the
political stage in the wings and concealed behind the sets and scenery,
despite their populations, armaments, oil money and UN influence much
greater than Israel’s, not to mention support from other Muslim states,
as well as the political influence flowing from control of an essential
raw material, oil. The notion also encompassed an identification of this
section of Arabs with Jesus (in the Western mind) which would have been
nearly impossible if the pan-Arab belief in one great Arab nation had
continued to prevail in the West. The cloudy notion of “Palestinians” as
somehow connected to the Arabs but separate from them facilitated the
view identifying these Arabs as a collective Jesus. They too are
innocent, peaceful, innocuous and crucified by Jews, that is, by Israel
representing the collective Jew. Georges Montaron entitled an editorial
“Jesus Christ, a Palestinian Refugee.”[iv]

This
view became common in anti-Israel circles, particularly but not only in
anti-Israel church circles. Among the more secular, this view tended to
be an unconscious paradigm.

As the “Palestinian people”
notion gained momentum after the Six Day War, it allowed public opinion
to forget that the actual armed conflict began as a pan-Arab war
against Jewish independence in Israel, starting shortly after the Nov.
29, 1947, UN General Assembly Partition Plan recommendation. Indeed, in
the first four Arab-Israeli wars –1947-49, 1956, 1967, 1973— the
military role of the Palestinian Arabs was relatively minor.

If
we examine TV news presentations, consider the BBC. “Palestinians”
repeatedly suffer the equivalent of crucifixion by Israel. We see
nightly passion plays when we watch TV broadcasts of Arab clashes with
Israelis, of Arab violence against Israel and/or Israeli civilians, and
the Israeli suppression of or defense against such violence. The
“Palestinians”, the collective Jesus, undergo a passion over and over
again. The Middle Ages have returned in force, in both religious and
secular garb.

Officials and leaders of the PLO have seen
the advantage in identifying Jesus as a Palestinian Arab. The official
Palestinian Authority paper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, wrote: “We must not forget that Messiah [Jesus] is a Palestinian, the son of Mary the Palestinian” (Nov. 18, 2005).[v]
Nevertheless, this claim has not ensured good treatment for Arab
Christians living in the Palestinian Authority zones. But that is
another story.

For an example of many news broadcasts
about Israel as repeated versions of passion plays, consider the
Muhammad al-Durah Case. This affair has also been properly described as a
ritual murder libel or blood libel. But a ritual murder libel, like a
passion play, is also a recreation of the crucifixion. It also entails a
harmless, innocuous, innocent, typically a boy before puberty, and here
Muhammad al-Durah fits in with William of Norwich, Hugh of Lincoln, and
Simon of Trent. It also typically asserts Jewish use of the murdered
innocent’s blood in a Jewish religious ritual, such as eating Passover matsoh
baked with his blood. That element is missing from the al-Durah Case
although it does turn up in the Damascus blood libel of 1840, where the
two victims were not boys but a priest and his servant. A priest of
course is commonly represented as an innocent. The advantage for Israel
in the al-Durah Case is that the full film of the event, including the
“rushes” shown in a French courtroom in Philippe Karsenty’s second trial
for libel but not shown on France2 on that fateful evening in September
2000, shows that the boy did not die at the publicly reported time and
place, if at all. This is confirmed by other evidence. Pierre-Andre
Taguieff, an expert on conspiracy theories and mass delusions,
particularly involving Jewish and Jewish-masonic plots, places the
al-Durah Affair in the tradition of anti-Jewish frauds like the Protocols forgery.[vi]

Blood also enters of course into the notion of Jews as capitalist blutsaugers common in German Judeophobia of the 19th and 20th centuries up to the Holocaust, and sometimes beyond that horrendous event.

Although
today Israel’s original sin is often specified as Jewish settlement in
the country –labeled “colonization” rather than immigration—Israel’s
original sin was seen after the Independence War as the alleged
expulsion of Arabs in 1948. Many people have the image in their minds of
Holocaust survivors, cruel, insensitive, brutal, having become Nazis in
their turn, descending from refugee boats to drive Arabs or –since the
1960s— innocent “Palestinians” from their homes where they had lived
since time immemorial. This narrative misses the fact that the first
refugees in Israel during the Arab war to prevent Israeli independence
were Jews, starting in December 1947. And that the first refugees in the
war who could not go home after it were Jews from the Shimon haTsadiq,
Nahalat Shimon and Siebenbergen Houses quarters in Jerusalem, driven out
in December 1947-January 1948.[vii]
It also misses the bellicose, blood-thirsty Arab threats before and
during the war. For instance, Abdul-Rahman Azzam, secretary general of
the Arab League, threatened –in the form of a warning of course: “This
will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be
spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades."[viii]
Moreover, in the first months of the war the Arabs had the upper hand
in the combat and very frankly boasted of it. That fact too is missed
nowadays as is what Jamal Husseini, the Palestinian Arab spokesman, told
the Security Council (April 16, 1948): The Arabs “did not deny” that
they had “begun the fighting. . . We told the whole world that we were
going to fight.”[ix]

All
in all, it has become chic to see Jews and Israelis as Nazis, as doing
to the innocent Arabs, innocent Palestinians, what the Nazis had done to
them, etc. To be sure, this belief is very deeply ingrained among
Judeophobes whose own minds could not accept that Jews were innocent
victims of the Shoah. That is, among those who resented in any event any
sense of Western guilt for the Holocaust. That sentiment was another
reason for wanting to see the “Palestinians” as innocents – and to
concomitantly see the Jews as guilty of harming them. In other words,
many people in the West felt a psychological need to reject --or divest
themselves of-- any sense of guilt over the Holocaust. French
mainstream journalist Catherine Nay stated on TV: “The death of Muhammad
[al-Durah] cancels, erases, that of the Jewish child, hands in the air
before the SS in the Warsaw Ghetto.”[x]

The
mental operation of seeing Israelis as guilty enables these people to
maintain a sense of their own rectitude, comfortably maintaining the
Judeophobic tradition. The fact that the chief Palestinian Arab leader,
Haj Amin el-Husseini, had encouraged Eastern European Nazi satellite
governments to send Jewish children to Poland (where they would be
“under stringent control,” he wrote[xi])
is either unknown to many or felt to be irrelevant. The Arab (or
especially the Palestinian) narrative helps to restore and maintain
European moral self-esteem.

As early as December 1948,
an American academic coming back from the UNESCO meeting in Beirut
declared “that the Jews had thrown the Palestine Arabs out of their
villages and towns in order to fill them with Jewish refugees.”[xii]
It was satisfying or comforting to many to feel that Israel was
treating Arabs cruelly or even doing to Arabs what Nazis had done to
Jews. Furthermore, alleged Israeli crimes against Arabs were made to
seem even worse, when compared with alleged tolerant, even kindly
treatment of Jews by Arabs over the centuries. The refrain has long been
widespread that, as Walt and Mearsheimer expressed it a few years ago:

...in
the Christian West... Jews suffered greatly from the despicable legacy
of Anti-Semitism... But ... the creation of Israel involved additional
crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.[xiii]

This
too is false as I, among others, have shown (see my “The Forgotten
Oppression of Jews under Islam and in the Land of Israel,” Midstream,
September-October 2008). Where the Walt-Mearsheimer claim differs from
similar claims made around the time of the War of Independence was that
then innocence and kindly treatment of Jews were ascribed to Arabs
generally. But viewing Arabs –and now Palestinian Arabs particularly—as
historically innocent towards Jews is psychologically helpful for many
in the West. The Arab anti-Israel narrative, Arab grievances --true,
false, or hyperbolic-- help restore the European self-image, European
self-esteem.

Stefano Levi della Torre has stressed the importance of understanding that
.
. . antisemitism is a tradition; it is transmitted as a tradition; it
persistently progresses, albeit with fluctuations, as does a tradition.
That is to say, it is an anthropological-cultural fact of Christian and
post-Christian Europe.[xiv]

Levi
della Torre understands that the simple fact of the Holocaust and an
ostensibly “new Europe” did not erase an age-old tradition. So does
Jean-Claude Milner who wrote a provocatively titled book in this vein, Les Penchants criminels de l’Europe démocratique [the criminal inclinations of democratic Europe] (Paris: Verdier 2004).

In
the overwhelming intellectual confusion of our times, the “Palestinian
people” notion with its sundry connotations has become a mystique.
Brendan O’Neill, a reporter for The Australian, demonstrates
that the “Left” is not exempt from this mood, this tradition, this
mystique. He reports an obsession with Israel on the part of a crowd in
London supposedly demonstrating in favor of Egyptians suffering
repression by their own government. Yet, the demonstrators in London
show that their concern is more with Israel as a hate symbol than with
the ongoing sufferings of real Egyptians, albeit they express their
hatred for Israel through adoration for Israel’s symbolic antithesis,
Palestine:

The speakers had trouble getting the audience
excited about events in Egypt. … Yet every mention of the word Palestine
induced a kind of Pavlovian excitability among the attendees. They
cheered when the P-word was uttered, chanting: “Free, free Palestine!”

This
reveals something important about the Palestine issue. … [It] has
become less important for Arabs and of the utmost symbolic importance
for Western radicals at exactly the same time. (Brendan O’Neill –The Australian, 16 February 2011)

They chant: Free Palestine; not: Free Egypt.
We see that the fixation on Israel as a hate symbol, or on “Palestine”
as an adored object, if you like, is facilitated by the notion of a
Palestinian people. It is understood that this “Palestinian people” is
repeatedly crucified. Indeed, crucified by those who crucified Jesus.
The “Palestinian people” notion has become a mystique of suffering and
struggle.

Pierluigi Battista sums up the mystique at work here. A widespread mind-set, he writes:

.
. . has made the Palestinians –in these years and decades— into, not a
historical entity, but the incarnation, the paradigm, the symbol, of the
Victim. The emblem of the outcast, the synthesis of all the “wretched
of the Earth.” The People par excellence that takes up the
burden of all the sufferings, the atrocities, the forced labor that the
oppressed peoples undergo. A symbol that necessarily leads to its
opposite, to the other protagonist of this drama that is more cosmic
than historical, more ideal than real and concrete: the figure, the
incarnation, the paradigm of the Persecutor. And if a colossal stupidity
is taking hold and spreading about “yesterday’s” victim who is
transforming into “today’s” executioner, it is because you, you
anti-Zionists have found grounds for reassuring certainties in this
grotesque representation of Good and Evil that clash in a universal
struggle. . . . It is very difficult to break away from such a toxic
Manichean spell.[xv]

B. The Alien Nature of Jews

Indeed,
Jews first came to Europe as immigrants, yet the belief that the Jew is
alien also grows out of a religious tradition. Kenneth Stow elaborates
on the notion of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, in
medieval Europe. The body of Christian believers belonged to the Body of
Christ, while urban communes and political entities were viewed in the
same way. [xvi]
Obviously, Jews were not and could not be part of the Body of Christ.
Hence, they were aliens whose very presence violated the sanctity of the
Corpus Christi.

Jews are still perceived as
aliens in the West, no doubt with the help of interested governments and
psychological warfare services. It is strikingly ironic to realize how
Jews were perceived as alien in many European countries 100 years ago.
They were then seen as alien precisely because they were Oriental or
Asiatic in origin. That means that the Jews originated in what is now
called the Middle East. Yet today, anti-Zionists loudly assert that Jews
are alien to the Middle East and to the historic Land of Israel in
particular. This view seems to be as much rooted in Western tradition as
in Arab-Muslim beliefs. To be sure, the conceptions of Jews in both the
West and the Arab-Muslim domain are complex. Some Arabs, particularly
among Islamists, see today’s Jews as precisely the descendants of the
Jews of Muhammad’s time who opposed his new religion. Jihadists sailing
on the Turkish ferryboat, the Mavi Marmara, seeking to break the
blockade on Gaza, thereby favoring Hamas, sang a charming ditty on
shipboard:

Khaybar Khaybar ya Yahud

Jaysh Muhammad sa ya`ud

[Remember] Khaybar Khaybar O Jews,
Muhammad’s army is coming back

The
Khaybar oasis in northern Arabia was inhabited by Jewish farmers in
Muhammad’s time who refused to surrender to Muhammad’s Muslim forces and
were eventually defeated, despoiled, and killed or enslaved. Thus,
fighting Jews is nothing new in the Arab-Muslim imagination. The Jews
are seen as hated, despised enemies but not especially as aliens from
another continent. Indeed Israelites, later Jews, have lived in the
Middle East for thousands of years. Rather, it is the pro-Arabs in the
West who are more likely to see the Jews and Israel as alien to the
Middle East, insisting that Jews are really Europeans, if not
quintessential Europeans, thereby also casting Europe’s sense of guilt
for colonialism onto the Jews. Ironically, as said above, 100 and 200
years ago, European Judeophobes saw the Jews as Orientals alien to
Europe. Now the Jews are said to be really Europeans alien to the Middle
East. The basic accusation remains the same, although the locus of
where the Jews are alien has shifted. Essentially, some perceive Jews as
alien wherever they are.

More than 200 years ago, Kant
and Hegel, the leading lights of German philosophy, defined the Jews as
inferior Orientals, as Asiatics, therefore incapable of reason, science,
and progress.[xvii]
This view was less widespread in France during that Enlightenment
period, although shared by Voltaire and d’Holbach. Highlighting the
Jews’ alien nature, Kant explicitly described the German Jews as “the
Palestinians who live among us.”[xviii] These were the beginnings of post-Christian Judeophobia, although flowing from medieval Christian beliefs.[xix]

Exemplifying
belief in the more recent locus of the Jews’ alien nature is Helen
Thomas, a journalist long privileged among the White House press corps.
She displayed an especially perverse version of this anti-Zionist
belief. She said Jews who live in Israel should "get the hell out of
Palestine" and “go home." When asked where home was for Jews, Thomas
offered "Poland, Germany...” Perhaps most shocking in her remarks was
her assertion that Germany and Poland were “home” for Jews as she
disregarded a thousand years of history, culminating in Hitler’s death
camps. Moreover, Thomas seemed unaware of the absurdity of her position.
After all, as an American born of Lebanese parents, why could she not
be told: Go home to Lebanon, by someone speaking on behalf of the native
American Indians? Again, like Georges Montaron, what she said
explicitly is believed and affirmed implicitly or more quietly by many.

Arguments
based on alleged Jewish skin color also emerged to support the notion
of Jews as alien to the Middle East. In the 1960s, some extreme “left”
and other publications claimed that the Jews (or “Zionists”) had built
their homeland in a country of “non-white people.” This insinuated that
Jews were “white” in contrast to “non-white” Arabs, and hence did not
“belong” in the Middle East. This argument overlooked the traditional
Arab self-image as “white” vis-à-vis Black people.[xx]
Further, the Nazi dogma of “non-white” inferiority had not stopped most
Arab nationalists from allying or sympathizing with the Nazis.

It is interesting in this context, that George DuMaurier’s novel Trilby,
a best-seller in Britain in the 1890s, featured a Jewish villain who
was both swarthy and personified evil. The villain takes advantage of a
pure white, innocent maiden, thus combining the themes of the Jew as
dark alien and the Jew as evildoer. Note that DuMaurier identified the
swarthy evildoer as a Polish Jew.[xxi]

In
fact, a wide range of skin colors characterizes both Jews –including
European Jews, Ashkenazim-- and Arabs. Perhaps for this reason, the
charge of “white” Jews despoiling “non-white” Arabs is nowadays seldom
to be found. But reasoning based on empirical facts is in any case in
short supply nowadays, indeed it is out of fashion when speaking of
Israel where often unreason rules.

C. Jewish Domination over One Country or over the World

The
paranoid notion of Jewish domination is facilitated by belief in a
Jewish or Zionist inherent evil and sinfulness and in the Jews’ alien
nature. But it has its own history. The classic statement of Jewish
aspiration to world domination, the forgery and plagiarism, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
has had an immensely murderous impact. Norman Cohn described this work
as a “Warrant for Genocide” in the title of his book on the subject.
Their impact has been huge. In the United States, Henry Ford, the
wealthy auto manufacturer, produced his own Judeophobic work or
pastiche, based on the Protocols, what he called The International Jew. The Protocols came out of a certain ideological/historical background. They did not emerge out of thin air.

As early as 1806, Louis de Bonald, a French Catholic aristocrat yearning for return of the ancien régime, had warned of emancipated Jews obtaining political power which would lead to Jewish domination.[xxii]
In 1845, Alphonse Toussenel, a socialist, a follower of Fourier, made
the point more graphically. He entitled his book, inspired by Bonald, The Jews, Kings of the Age (Les Juifs, Rois de l’époque). By the late 19th
century, the prominence in the economic life of several Western
countries of Jews, emancipated not so long before, evoked fantasies of
Jewish domination.[xxiii]

John
Buchan wrote such a fantasy in Britain, early in World War I. This
novelist, the author of mystery-cum-foreign intrigue thrillers, placed
Jews at the top of the hierarchy of those plotting a world war. Buchan’s
narrator recounts what he heard from a mysterious interlocutor. The
Jewish connivers included both anarchists and capitalists. The
anarchists

looked to see a new world emerge. The capitalists would rake in the shekels, and make fortunes by buying up wreckage. Capital . . . had no conscience and no fatherland. Besides, the Jew was behind it, and the Jew hated Russia worse than hell. . . .

“. . . The Jew is everywhere,
but you have to go far down the backstairs to find him. Take any big
Teutonic business concern. If you have dealings with it the first man
you meet is Prince von und zu Something, an elegant young man .
. . But he cuts no ice. If your business is big, you get behind him
and find a prognathous Westphalian with a retreating brow and the
manners of a hog. He is the German business man that gives your English
papers the shakes. But if you're on the biggest kind of job and are
bound to get to the real boss, ten to one you are brought up against a little white-faced Jew in a bath-chair with an eye like a rattle-snake. Yes, sir, he is the man who is ruling the world
just now, and he has his knife in the Empire of the Tsar, because his
aunt was outraged and his father flogged in some one-horse location on
the Volga.”

I could not help saying that his Jew-anarchists seemed to have got left behind. . . .

Buchan’s
reader might easily infer that in Britain’s enemy of the time, Imperial
Germany, the true holder and wielder of authority --the real
decision-maker in Kaiser Wilhelm’s Reich-- was a Jew who sat at
the pinnacle of power. Buchan’s fantasy conveyed the message that the
British Empire was not simply fighting Germany but concealed Jewish
power.[xxiv]

In Germany on the other hand, not long after World War I, the Nazis too warned of Jewish domination, pointing to the Protocols.
Yet, years after the end of Nazi rule in 1945, a major political leader
of Western Europe and the European Community, Charles de Gaulle,
explicitly called the Jews: “a domineering people.”[xxv]

Some
even feared that the Jews, scattered until then [establishment of the
Jewish National Home, circa 1920], but who had remained what they had
always been, that is, an elite, self-assured, domineering people, might,
once they were reunited on the site of their ancient grandeur, turn the
very moving hopes they had formed over nineteen centuries: “Next year
in Jerusalem,” into a burning ambition of conquest. (De Gaulle, press
conference, 27 November 1967)[xxvi]

Need
we add that de Gaulle himself was an imperialist. Perhaps he was
projecting. Yet, through the cunning of history, the gist of this
statement has been taken up by hordes of those who call themselves
“anti-imperialist.”

Whereas the Protocols –coming to prominence in the 20th century—had claimed to reveal a Jewish plot to obtain world domination, in the 21st
century, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, mainstream academic
specialists in international relations, argued that Jews and Israel had
already achieved domination over American Middle Eastern policy. This
was the thrust of their “working paper” published in the London Review of Books, later expanded and published as a book, or what years ago used to be called a non-book, The Israel Lobby.
They did not explain why –if Israel and its friends exercised hegemony
over US Middle Eastern policy-- the Bush administration (preceding
Obama’s) had asserted that Jews living over Israel’s 1949 armistice line
were -- “an obstacle to peace.” Their book or non-book is itself
ridiculous and cannot be considered serious research or analysis, the
previous reputations of Walt and Mearsheimer notwithstanding. It was
generally panned by critics ranging from Walter Russell Mead[xxvii] to Martin Peretz to Jeffrey Goldberg, and even to academics themselves hostile to Israel.

American
Communists once argued that Israel was an “appendage of the State
Department,” an imperialist tool of the US, as it were. This was not
true when Communists asserted it in the 1950s and 1960s. Be that as it
may, today’s “leftists” often reverse the claim. That is, they often
argue that Jews and/or Israel control American foreign policy in the
Middle East to the detriment of US interests. Thus, so to speak, the US
government is “an appendage” of Israel. Yet the claim of Jewish (or
Zionist) control of the US has long been a claim made by American Nazis
and “ultra-rightists.” The latter favored the acronym ZOG, meaning
“Zionist-Occupied Government.” We now view the spectacle of “leftists”
echoing “right-wing” or “neo-Nazi” arguments.

Walt and
Mearsheimer made the foolish notion of Jewish control acceptable to many
of those who consider themselves right-thinking or bien-pensant.
Walt and Mearsheimer were the ones who –more than anyone else-- built
the bridge between the “left” and the “ultra-right” on this issue,
through their “Working Paper” –available on the Internet-- and later
their book It seems that there isn’t much that the State Department or
President Obama can say or do to persuade the believers in this notion
that it is no more than a myth. Obama and Secretary Clinton’s strictures
against Jews living in Judea-Samaria and “East Jerusalem” cannot
persuade the True Believer that Israel does not control the White House.
Unreason rejects reason and fact. And cannot be persuaded.

Today’s anti-Zionists follow old themes, old paradigms and archetypes of antisemitism, of Judeophobia. Old wine in new bottles.

[xx] Black Africa was named in Arabic “Land of the Blacks” (bilad as-Sudan). Also see the framework tale in The Thousand and One Nights,
of King Shahzaman and King Shahriyar, as well as “The Ensorcelled
Prince” and other tales in that collection. Also see Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press 1990).

[xxi] On literary depictions of Jews as swarthy and Oriental, see Linda Nochlin & Tamar Garb, The Jew in the Text
(London: Thames & Hudson 1995), particularly Brian Cheyette,
“Neither Black nor White: The Figure of the Jew in Imperial British
Literature,” pp 31-35, and Tamar Garb, “Introduction: Modernity and the
Jew,” p26.

We are hypocrites and cowards - we take freedom for granted as it is eroding underneath our feet‏

Message to offended Muslims

A GOOD, TRUE STORY NOT KNOWN BY MANY.....Air Force.

The IDF’s Minorities in Numbers and Pictures

In honor of IDF Diversity Week, we present diversity through numbers and pictures. Each year, more and more Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin and immigrants from around the world take on the responsibility of defending Israel.

MUSLIMS:

Muslim Arab Israelis are not required to draft in the IDF, but there are many who volunteer. In 2013, there were over 200 Muslims serving in the IDF and over 300 in the reserves.

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Report: 83 percent of doctors have considered quitting over Obamacare

Sally Nelson

Eighty-three percent of American physicians have considered leaving their practices over President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, according to a survey released by the Doctor Patient Medical Association.

Islamization on the move

"What we are dealing with is Islamization. Islamization is the imposition of ideological norms in increasing severity. Like Nazification, it transforms a society by remaking it in its own image from the largest to the smallest of details."Daniel Greenfield

Toronto rejects Anti-Israel Ads...

Shrinking Lands

Why Israel opposes international forces in the jordan valley/

/why-israel-opposes-international-forces-in-the-jordan-valley/

Islam is Islam, And That’s It

Back in 2007, when confronted with the phrase “moderate Islam”, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan famously responded: “These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading and annotating this video: View video at http://gatesofvienna.net/

There's no racist like a liberal racist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vz4PjxSmtoI

Ex-Navy SEAL Drops Bombshell On FOX: Says Government is Creating Conditions to Impose Martial Law R

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDuds14OBiE#t=156

American surprise

The Nairobi Mall Massacre

Ninh Chu Ninh Chu

Islam Untied

Platitudes about Islam being a faith of peace are not credible anymore. Islam is only as good as the way its followers practice it; and if they have created killing fields in the name of Islam, then Islam will be recognized by the silence of those who did not speak out when their faith was being massacred to massacre humanity.

AFTERBURNER w/ BILL WHITTLE: The Lynching

What-are you against peace?

Sydney Wake Up The Horrific Muslim Infiltration Of Britain - Luton

Kerry: 'Core Issue of Instability ... Is the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict'‏

Kerry is no friend. By endorsing the "Arab peace initiative" he shows his true intentions and beliefs . And by endorsing linkage he shows that he is either a liar or a fool.Syria is on fire, Egypt is at best incredibly unstable and this is due to Israel? It is out in the open!

A word to left-wing students

In their own words-ru listening?

"The lesson these Islamist groups appear to be drawing from events in Egypt is that democratic engagement with opponents is pointless. And that doesn't bode well for countries with strong Islamist movements..."

Flashback: Obama Admits He Cut Medicare

Another Democratic slogan blown to h....

Are you aware that in 2013, Middle class taxes go up-significantly?

In January of next year, the federal income tax rate for middle-class taxpayers is scheduled to rise from 25 percent to 28 percent, and the payroll tax is scheduled to rise from 13.3 percent to 15.3 percent… This drives the marginal tax rate based on the aforementioned three taxes to 48.12 percent. Add in state and local property, corporate, excise, and other state and local taxes, and the percentage of each additional dollar that is taxed hovers around 50 percent… When half of each additional dollar earned is taxed away, taxpayers experience a disincentive to start businesses or expand existing ones. This leads to fewer jobs being created.

When nations and cultures ignore the early warning signs of the infiltration of radical Islam

The UK has 85 sharia courts. France has over 750 “no go zones,” Muslim enclaves where even French police don’t enter.

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDKk15KcqNk&feature=email

No such thing as "Islamophobia"

However, if you do not want your positions challenged or criticized or even researched, make up a new "phobia"-shout it long enough and some "people", agenda driven, will use it. Ay, yes, the false term does keep many, many financially rewarded-follow the money.gs don morris, Ph.D.

Khader Adnan: Leader of Islamic jihad or innocent baker?

Why is HAMAS Inside Tampa Schools?

Clare Lopez

Kelly Miliziano, who teaches history classes at Steinbrenner High School in the Tampa, Florida area apparently thinks it’s perfectly OK to invite a senior official of a HAMAS-affiliated organization into her classroom to discuss Islam with her students. According to local media reports, not only has this been going on for years, but in spite of the civil and criminal proceedings that could result from such reckless negligence, the Hillsborough County school superintendent, Mary Ellen Elia, and the chairman of the school board, Candy Olson, also expressed approval for students under their responsibility to be exposed repeatedly to guest speaker, Hassan Shibly, who is the Executive Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the Tampa area.More...

Omar Barghouti's Propaganda at USC on January 12, 2012

Did You Know... Ignoring the Call to Islam will Bring Jihad

‘Conquest through Da’wa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.’ -- Yousef al-Qaradawi , Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader The Arabic word ‘Da’wa’ means the “call to Islam.” But do not think that Da’wa is the same thing as an invitation to an optional holiday event. The classical Islamic doctrine of jihad mandates that enemies must be given the opportunity to convert to Islam or pay the jizya tax before it is permissible to attack them.Clare M. Lopez

Americans are opening their eyes

Advertisers fleeing All-American Muslim 'propaganda'The American people are seeing through the propaganda piece that is TLC's All-American Muslim reality/dawah show, and responsible advertisers are fleeing in droves. The show aims to combat a trumped-up problem, "Islamophobia," by presenting Muslims who are just ordinary folk, and

Why Islam is Incompatible with Western Law

Col. Allen West answers a question on muslim terror

Challah's Gaza Rocket Counter

This Month:4Last Month:191

This Year: 562

Total since 2002: 12055

Cease fire Hamas style!!

Thanks http://challahhuakbar.blogspot.com/

"Islamophobia"

"Islamophobia" was a politically manipulative coinage designed to silence critics of Islamic supremacism.It was invented, deliberately, by a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, which is based in Northern Virginia.

10 Unknown West Bank Facts

Liberals Redefine "Extremism" and the "Political Center"

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview

with PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist.The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Don’t ever call it ‘West Bank’ again

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive, said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Who do the territories belong to?

The legal borders of Israel under international law

The Arab Apartheid

Ben-Dror YeminiIn 1948, the Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition proposal and they launched a war of annihilation against the State of Israel which had barely been established. All precedents in this matter showed that the party that starts the war - and with a declaration of annihilation, yet - pays a price for it. Between 550,000 and 710,000 Arabs fled because of the war and a larger number of 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries (the "Jewish nakba").Population exchanges and expulsions were the norm at that time, occurring in dozens of other conflict points and affecting about 52 million people. In all the population exchange precedents that occurred during or at the end of an armed conflict, there was no return of refugees to the previous region, which had turned into a new national state. Only the Arab states acted completely differently from the rest of the world. Instead of assimilating the refugees, they crushed them despite the fact that they were their coreligionists and members of the Arab nation - instituting a regime of apartheid. So the "nakba" was not caused by the actual dispossession, which had also been experienced by tens of millions of others. The "nakba" is the story of the apartheid, oppression, abuse and denial of rights suffered by the Arab refugees at the hands of the Arab countries. (Maariv)

How Liberals Argue

Hebrew Univ-you rock!!

Judea and Samaria are not "occupied" lands-why?

Judea-Samaria were not only parts of the ancient Jewish homeland but were recognized as part of the Jewish National Home recognized by San Remo and the League of Nations [1920, 1922] and by the UN charter [article 80; 1945].

"Political Correctness."

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rapidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."Texas A&M

Christopher Monckton Speaking in St. Paul on the climate issues

International Law and Military Operations in Practice - Col. Richard Kemp

"Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. "

Lost Historical Moments

WHAT Golda Meir actually said...

"When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." Golda Meir June 15, 1969: Interview in the UK Sunday Times

What Rabin’s last Knesset speech really said:repudiation of a Palestinian state

Rabin ruled out a fully sovereign Palestinian state :

“We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

Rabin ruled out a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and thus a return to the pre-June 1967 borders :

“The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”

Rabin ruled out withdrawing form the Jordan Valley:

“The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”

Rabin ruled out uprooting settlement blocs, like the Gush Katif bloc in Gaza (which was subsequently uprooted by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon):

“The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

AND

Rabin ruled out removing any settlement before coming to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians:

“I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.”

Rabin insisted on Israel retaining full security control of the borders with Egypt and Jordan, contrary to Israel’s relinquishment of the Philadelphia Corridor on the border with Egypt:

“The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands.”

Correcting Oslo Myths-Part 2

3) Kuttab laments that the post-1993 Oslo process resulted in a Palestinian Authority "whose ministers and legislators are not guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank ...."

Before free passage or other perquisites, PA leaders were obligated, among other things, to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, end anti-Israeli, antisemitic incitement in schools, mosques, and communications media, and resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. They met none of these commitments, sometimes bolstering terrorism and greatly increasing incitement.

4) Kuttab complains that under Oslo the PA got "lightly armed police ---- but no real sovereignty over the land or contiguity between our communities in Gaza and the West Bank."

Oslo agreements repeatedly were revised, regardless of Palestinian non-compliance, until the authorized number of police grew from 8,000 to 40,000. Though they were to be the only armed forces in the territories, Israeli estimates early in the second intifada put the number of gunmen - police, "security services," terrorists, and armed gangs - at 85,000. Their armament reportedly included not only heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but also anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

Sovereignty was to be negotiated in the envisioned 1998 "final status" talks - after a five-year period of confidence-building. Palestinian leadership chronically undermined the process. Palestinian terrorism made the 1993 - 1998 Oslo period more deadly for Israelis than the 15 years preceding it.

The United States doesn't have contiguity between the lower 48 states and Alaska and Hawaii; territorial contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza Strip - that is, through the 20 miles of Israeli territory between them - was never promised and would destroy Israeli contiguity.

5) "Palestinians have been made to endure hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, an eight-foot wall deep in our territories, and tight Israeli control over borders."

The security barrier is not "deep in Palestinian territories," but rather encompasses less than 8 percent of Judea and Samaria, and is mostly a fence, rarely a wall; the land in question is not "our [Palestinian] territories" but disputed territory to which, according to the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Jews as well as Arabs have claims; and there are no international borders, only the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan. Under 242, borders remain to be negotiated. As for checkpoints - like the security barrier and "tight Israeli control" - Palestinian Arabs precipitated these measures themselves. No terrorism and there would be no fence or tight Israeli control and few checkpoints - like before the first intifada.

Correcting Some Oslo Myths

1) In Oslo "Israeli, Palestinian and other world leaders promised that ... Palestinian sovereignty would be solidified."

No, they didn't. The 1993 Declaration of Principles and subsequent Oslo agreements outlined a process by which final status negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be reached. The process required an end to anti-Israel terrorism and incitement and a commitment to peaceful negotiations. The PA, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups, sabotaged the process from the start.

2) "The reality is that, in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that it is inadmissible to occupy land by force, Palestinian territories are still under foreign military occupation."Wrong again. Resolution 242 (1967) does note "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." It also affirms the right of every state in the area "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." There were no "Palestinian territories." Jordan occupied the West Bank, Egypt controlled Gaza. Israel did not have "secure and recognized boundaries," so retention of some of those territories was possible under 242. Israel is not a "foreign" military occupier in the West Bank but, pending final negotiations, the lawful military administrator as a result of a successful war of self-defense.

About Me

Semi-retired Professor, now also permanent resident of Israel;divides time between both countries-serves on several Boards of Directors for Israel advocacy groups;Chana, resident of Jerusalem, JCPA member